Boer War Captured Mauser

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r.j.medals2

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Greetings . I have an 1893 Mauser 7x57 that has the British broad arrows facing each other,Which I am told is a captured rifle. It has wood that is amazing , barrel is sharp and bright, totally matching numbers .The stock also has initials carved into it , which apparently was common for the Boers to do. Here is a bit of gun #### for you Mauser/ Boer War collectors . Cheers.
I will be selling .
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Beautiful rifle. The DWM on the receiver, vice Ludwig Loewe, tells you that it was made toward the end of the 19th century. My carbine, part of a contract from August 1897, was made when the company was called Ludwig Loewe. The receiver has not been 'scrubbed', as Boer contract rifles and carbines were made as 'anonymous' as possible. They often had a cryptic cypher on the left or right-hand side of the rear of the butt, as your clearly has, and a repeat of the serial number on the wood immediately below the one stamped on the receiver, but I can't see it on your photograph. I'll let real experts discuss your nomenclature.

tac
 
I have never seen the opposed broad arrows on one before, was this Mauser captured by the British and then sold out of military surplus later on ?
 
Correct , it was apparently British captured and they used the opposing arrows to show that it was a captured weapon. It was either sold out as surplus or taken home as a souvenir.
I acquired a very nice military rifle collection and this is one of the pieces .
 
I won't say it is or isn't a Boer Mauser. I have owned a couple and I have never seen initials so poorly done. The ones I have seen and owned were rustic to incredible. As for the capture marks. They may also be sold out of service marks.

Whatever that is a very nice rifle. It's to bad there wasn't a full name on it. You could trace back the original owner. Many of those rifles were purchased privately or were given to the Boers that carried them and often bore carvings on the butts to acknowledge this. Some were Pleiser Mausers or pleasure Mausers. They were called this because the privately owned rifles were taken home between stints and had the fore ends under the stock ferrule cut on an angle so they could be removed for hunting etc and put back together for martial purposes. There were so many variations of Boer Mausers anything can be possible. Good luck with confirmation on that though

Many Boer Rifles that were bought by the government at the time were stamped OVS on the receiver ring. Orange Vrie Stat, or Orange Free State. This stamp was added in South Africa. Your rifle would likely fall into the Pleasure Mauser class as not all of them were cut for home use.
 
The name on my carbine is very clear - so much so that I've been able to trace a good deal of history about the owner, where he came from, his occupation, and how his carbine ended up being surrendered and the circumstances under which that took place.

If it had been sold in the UK, it would have British proof marks on it - and I don't see them. Don't forget that Canadians were also involved in the Boer War, but that they were under command of the British main force. This rifle may just have been captured by Canadian troops, stamped as a 'capture' and snuck back home by a sneaky Canuckian, since there is no trace whatsoever of it ever having been in the UK.

There is an Australian author, Dave George, whose books 'Carvings from the Veldt' are the definitive tomes on carving and identification of Boer rifles and carbines, from the Mauser to the Guedes. My carbine features in it, BTW. No doubt he would be interested enough to respond to anything you might send him by way of information, with a view to getting some back.

tac
 
Here is a thought, did the Boers or the OVS have a government store where would be issued rifles...etc were housed ? Perhaps this one came from such a store hence the lack of boer individuality ?
 
Best info on Boer War 2 is "Rifles and Carbines of the Anglo Boer War 1899-1902" Bester. Transvaal and OVS govts bought Mausers and sold them at cost along with Martini and Guedes rifles to their citizens from a govt armoury. Boer govt contract Mausers were in their own serial number blocks.
I have examined Boer Mausers unmarked, crudely initialed as with a nail and elaborately carved approaching folk art.
 
Have a good look at the condition. I think it may have been captured early in the war and taken home to Canada by someone here. The rifles with the carving and elaborate names etc were done over long periods of time . Creative moments when boredom sets in.
 
Nabs said:
Here is a thought, did the Boers or the OVS have a government store where would be issued rifles...etc were housed ? Perhaps this one came from such a store hence the lack of boer individuality ?
Click to expand...

Any rifles issued by the OVS I have seen have been stamped "OVS" under the serial number on the left side and are almost always in 7.65x53
 
r.j.medals2 said:
Have a good look at the condition. I think it may have been captured early in the war and taken home to Canada by someone here. The rifles with the carving and elaborate names etc were done over long periods of time . Creative moments when boredom sets in.
Click to expand...

At the beginning of the war was when personal rifles were used the most and often were given to the volunteer as gifts from a relative or land owner. These rifles would not have been OVS marked and most likely to be carved, maybe even before going to war. The Mausers used by the volunteers were very often chambered in 7x57. OP, I won't say your rifle wasn't in the Boer War but there are a lot of people making such claims with rifles that were nowhere near South Africa.
 
The ZAR(Transvaal) had two orders with DWM for Mausers:
First serial # 1-2000
Second serial #2001-10000 all in 7x57cal.
The OVS rifles were factory stamped OVS and were all in 7x57.
The rifle in the OP is likely a ZAR Mauser from the second DWM order.
The plesier Mausers were factory sporters with octagon barrel, pistol grip checkered half stock, small carbine style rear sight and hooded front sight and a German silver plaque on the rhs of the butt. They were numbered 1 to possibly 1000. they were purchased by the ZAR govt for sale to citizens.
 
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green said:
The ZAR(Transvaal) had two orders with DWM for Mausers:
First serial # 1-2000
Second serial #2001-10000 all in 7x57cal.
The OVS rifles were factory stamped OVS and were all in 7x57.
The rifle in the OP is likely a ZAR Mauser from the second DWM order.
The plesier Mausers were factory sporters with octagon barrel, pistol grip checkered half stock, small carbine style rear sight and hooded front sight and a German silver plaque on the rhs of the butt. They were numbered 1 to possibly 1000. they were purchased by the ZAR govt for sale to citizens.
Click to expand...


To bad I sold that little carbine last fall that was OVS marked and chambered in 7.65. I have a receiver around with OVS marks as well that was 7.65 but without a bbl. it would be hard to prove. On the other hand I do have what is left of the stock sect of a Pleiser Mauser that started life as a milspec mod 95. The stock is engraved with leaves and vines as well as a sentiment. That's why I won't say yay or nay to the OPs Mauser. For one thing it is way to clean to have seen combat field use. For another the engraving is way to coarse. The thing is anything is possible as far as firearms go from that war. One of the old timers I knew as a kid who immigrated to Canada before WWI told me most of the men on his father's farm went to war with shotguns and some with Mod 1871 single shot rifles. They had a different method of rounding up troops. Almost all were volunteers and free to come and go as they chose. Of course they took their weapons with them.
 
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For two good write ups on the "plezier" Mauser see the above book by Bester and "Mauser Military Rifles of the World" Ball 4th edition pg 263.
Also google "plezier rifle" for several good threads with pics showing rifle as I described.
All of the OVS Mausers I have examined were in 7x57 cal. The Bester book based on Boer records makes no mention of the Boer govts buying arms in 7.65 cal.
 
If the British put broad-arrows onto captured rifles there should be lots and lots of them out there. This is the first one I've seen but I'm fairly new to the game. As someone who would like to own a Boer rifle, what on this rifle tells us for sure that this saw use in Transvaal or the Orange Free State?

milsurpo
 
Here is mauser carbine and a 1896 L E 1 that I bought as a pair. They belonged to George Francis Salmon of the 2nd Battalion of the Canadian Mounted Rifles. The enfield stillhas the sling swivel use by the CMR. It is M&D marked above the rondle. The mauser is #6819 all parts matching ecept bolt which is from a rifle. There is a name carved into the stock PIET.K.WYKUS [last two letters not clear] Underneath is LADYSMITH XMAS 1899. On the otherside is GOLLSBURG FEB 1900. The places and dates seem to be different writing than the name. Mr. Salmon died in 1953 so no way of proving anything,but the guy I bought them from said the family said Mr. Salmon brought them home from the Boer War. The man on the horse is suposedly George Salmon.










 
What a wonderful collection of objects to own.

Great envy is mine!

The name is probably Wykhuis or Wykhujs - the i and the j were interchangeable in the Afrikaans spoken at that time.

tac
 
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